I believe that people should be rewarded for their hard work, whatever their passion may be.
..........Case in point: Microsoft's 55 year old co-founder and $18 billion dollar man Paul Allen is a never-been-married bachelor. In fact, this is so common that there's actually a Forbes Billionaire Bachelors list of never married men over 40.
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In conclusion, you cannot apply your values and principles to everyone in the world.
I have no beef with Paul Allen to be sure. This is only a discussion, for me, about balance, fairness. You use the phrase "..people should be rewarded for their hard work .." and at no point have I disagreed. But the notion that making a thousand times as much as the people who support you in your endeavor and work the same hours as you do, simply because you have a bit more talent, luck and drive than some of them, is simply a vulgar display of egocentricity. It has nothing whatever to do with fairness. Saying it is fair devalues every human being who had the talent but failed to be in just the right place at the right time.
Make no mistake, I do not expect nor "demand" that "life should be fair" .. that's not my position at all. But the discrepancy in wages between some corporate executives and the rest of us simply takes all meaning out of the word "fair" ..
Nothing you have said supports your view, you just keep saying that people should be rewarded for their efforst. Of course they should. But fair is fair, and saying they should be rewarded goes no distance at all towards determining in what manner and according to what guidelines of fair behavior.
Trying to arrive at a definition of fair should not be confused with applying my "values and principles to everyone in the world."
There needs to be a definition of fair, or not. But if you're going to discuss it, for gods sake, think about what you're saying. Fair equals compassionate regard for your fellow beings. I simply cannot see how you can make your blanket assessment that any imbalance, no matter how great, is fair "because people should be rewarded"
Lest you forget, our social structure is predicated upon the notion that if you do not conform you will be dispensed with. That means if you dont' like things, tough. Ownership of all the earths resources is predicated upon murder.
No structure can be sturdier than it's foundation. The foundation of all business is ownership of the earths resources, and that means that death awaits any who wish to restructure the way things are.
I submint that it behooves you to call it fair, simply because calling it otherwise would mean rearranging a fair portiion of your thinking, and that's not a comfortable prospect.
I personally don't care if it's fair or not. It's just life and death, we all have to come and go. What I want for myself is irrelevant to anyone else, and I can live with that.
But I care that we be precise and honest about what's going on instead of deluding ourselves. Murder for property ownership for the purpose of profit taking is not "fair" .. at least, not in my book. It might be in yours, if so, the discussion has reached a point of understanding.
If you were to take away "the law of man" for just short time you'd see just how fair life really is. It might take you a while to understand the shift in power that would occur, but that's what it would be about.
I ask you to think about how the ownership of the worlds resources has been established historically. Think about the mayhem that went into establishing that ownership. Think about what that means to the inhabitants of the world that one man might own all the coal, or all the water, .. etc. Think about how that translates to wage distributiton.
This is much a much bigger issue than you are addressing.